Dropbox vs icloud for photos

There are many products which offer “in the cloud” storage for saving your digital files and photographs. “In the cloud” storage means you are saving your files on a server accessed via the internet instead of on your own computer. It frees up your own memory, gives you access to those files from multiple devices anywhere in the world, and keeps those files backed up.

Two very popular companies, Google and Apple, both offer “in the cloud” storage for their users. With Google, the storage is called Google Drive. Apple cleverly calls theirs iCloud. Both are extremely useful, but for different applications.

From any computer with internet access, anywhere in the world, you can access just about any kind of document you’ve uploaded to Google Drive. You can also create word processing docs, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings in Google Drive. There are even additional apps you can add to Google Drive for office productivity, drawing, graphing, etc.

Apple’s iCloud provides 5 GB of “free” storage for Mail, Documents and any backing up you do with iCloud. Of course, an initial purchase of an Apple product is required before you receive the iCloud storage. Your purchased music, apps, books, TV shows and photo stream don’t count against the 5GB of free storage, which is nice. Even most music you have loaded into your computer from CD’s gets “stored” in the cloud. Apple also sells additional iCloud storage.

I like to use Google Drive for storing documents or copies of documents for these reasons:

Access to certain information from any computer device in the world

Keeping certain documents always backed up in the cloud

De-cluttering my computer

Easily sharing documents with others and even allowing editing

I like to use iCloud for some very Apple-specific reasons:

Automatically backing up any data I’ve saved or created in my iPhone/iPad apps

If you haven’t used “in the cloud” storage very much, Google Drive and iCloud are great products to begin using. And, if you need a little guidance, visit my link in the menu bar. Be sure to subscribe to my email updates on the right, too!